When it comes to spies, boring beats glamour

AS a childhood reader of spy novels, I acquired high expectations of the secret world.

- Ethan Croft

British spies would be flamboyant and exceptional. But looking around the post-university scene, I realise that all the people I knew who became spies are dull. There was the humdrum civil service fast streamer who mysteriously ended up living in Portsmouth, location of MI6’s training camp, for a few months. Another vanilla acquaintance abandoned post-university travels plans to move to Cheltenham, home of GCHQ. There was an unmemorable trainee army officer whose digital footprint disappeared without trace.